"I remember sitting on the sideline early in the game and watching the Saints send safety blitz after safety blitz, six- and seven-man blitzes trying to knock our quarterback out," Whitner told SiriusXM NFL Radio. "I don't know if it's true that Sean Payton got mad at Coach Harbaugh for not giving him some type of agreement on how much he was going to play his starters in a preseason game.

"Coach Harbaugh said, 'I don't have to give you an agreement. This is a competition league,' " Whitner added. "I guess (Payton) got mad and wanted to test some of our protections. We were a new team and this was one of our first games, and they tried to knock our quarterback out."

That quarterback was rookie Colin Kaepernick, who later jokingly recalled being blitzed 108 times.

Nobody's laughing now, of course, and Payton doesn't exactly come off as a choir boy, either. Let's hope for his sake this didn't come up during his Thursday appeal hearing.